Ms. New Booty: VIBE’s Assistant Editor Gives Butt Pads A Test Run

News

With more and more women shelling out bucks on butt implants, injections and pads (including your favorite celebs), are enhanced backsides no longer a social stigma? VIBE’s assistant editor Tracy Garraud (@trayhova)dives behind the trend to explore the effects of a padded derriere

Buying a fake ass takes poise. There’s no easy way to begin. “Hi… do you guys carry butt pads?” I inquire with zero swag inside a metallic-adorned Joyce Leslie store in downtown Manhattan. Downstairs in the lingerie section, I expect to find packs of booty discretely resting in a nook veiled by panties and thigh-highs. Instead, I’m led to a three-tiered cake of faux buns. “These just came in,” says the 40-something saleswoman. “They might have more stretch.”

After 15 minutes of pinching and comparing “Super Low Rise Butt Boosters” to “Figure Improving Technology,” I settle on a plump $7.99 pair (think Spanx with built-in padding). A young cashier speaks of ringing up at least three sets of cheeks a day. Call it a sign of the times. While butt implants have surged since the early 2000s–J. Lo-inspired boom, padding is fairly new. And with a mainstream brand like Booty Pops catering to more than a million orders this year, push-up panties are now rivaling push-up bras. If Nicki Minaj and Angel Lola Luv can (allegedly) transition from flat screens to donkalicious and get gawked at, shouldn’t your average chick’s confidence shoot with a rear boost?

While my natural rump doesn’t disappoint, admittedly these foam babies take my gluteus (37 inches) to the maximus (40 inches). After sauntering up and down SoHo’s cobblestones for 30 minutes in my fatty suit, I tally the neck breaks. Twenty from men of color; zero from the opposite. Plus, one American Apparel–sporting white chick that requests all my purchase details. Fun fact: Although they’re stereotypically viewed as bottom challenged, white women aren’t the biggest market for augmentation. Dr. George Lefkovits, a NYC-based plastic surgeon, says most of his female clients seeking butt enhancement already have oomph to work with.